Need Eudora alternative (shared folder)

To my complete horror, Eudora 7... which I have been -very- happily using for 15 years... is awful in Windows 7 64.

If you're a Eudora user you know what I'm on about. If not, basically take my word for it that -everyone- eventually gets sick of 'the problem' and moves onto something else. And 'the problem' is that it tends to lock up while scanning for messages. Given up trying trying to fix it. My hope is to find an alternative.

The logical candidate is Thunderbird, however I -cannot- for the life of me figure out how to make it do THE ONE FRICKIN' THING THAT MADE EUDORA TOTALLY INDISPENSABLE... which is... Eudora made it easy to have as many mail accounts as one likes stored on a folder which could be shared by multiple PCs on the same LAN.

I do NOT want to go to web mail. I do NOT want to use IMAP. I want another e-mail client that lets me do what Eudora did... again, have a 'share' that can be accessed by multiple PCs (not simultaneously).

Sorry for sounding so bitter, but I have found so many people under a certain age who have -no- idea what I'm talking about or -why- I would even -want- to do this. But I've got a zillion e-mail accts for several businesses and it is -way- easier to manage this with Eudora than any 'gmail' or IMAP solution I've found. Ironically, Outlook Express -used- to allow this with their PST files, but I'm told this is no longer possible in Win 7.

So... with all that... any alternatives? Paid or unpaid. I have Office... maybe Outlook can do this? Another client program with which I'm not familiar,

Thanks so much for any help. This one thing is by -far- the worst part of upgrading to Win 7... which is otherwise -way- better than XP.

Have you looked at Windows Live Mail? I have 2 Pop and 1 web mail set up so far. You can set WLM up to allow messages to be left on the server and then can be accessed by another PC. I am not sure about shared over a Lan. I never tried this.

This doesn't seem to be a common feature in email clients. You ask about Outlook. A quick google search will allow you to find some Outlook pst file synchronization apps, but most of them do not seem to provide automatic synchronization, which it seems to be what you want. I would definitely not run Outlook over a shared networked file, but synching the file to the different computers. Maybe have a look at the different available apps and see if any of them could be of use to you.

Thanks. I don't need to -synch- anything. I just need to be able to access the same accounts over several machines in my house/office (there are outbuildings). The way I've always done it---with Eudora, is to have the 'database' stored on a server and set up each client of Eudora to 'point' to that shared folder.

Thunderbird is supposed to be able to do this through 'Profiles' but there is no good docs on how to do it. All the people who -say- they can do it haven't posted instructions... strictly anecdotal. I've got like 12 e-mail accounts and it would be a PAIN to have to use a web mail app for all that.

Move your Profile To A Network Drive
Install Thunderbird separately on each computer but store your profile on a network file share. To launch This method to sync Thunderbird email requires that you have access to a shared / network drive. This is the most convenient method in the long run. However, it involves moving your existing profile to that drive, which can be tricky.

First make sure Show hidden files and folders is on. Close Thunderbird. Now copy the profile folder to the desired location on the network drive.

In Win7 you will find your Thunderbird profile under > C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\
If you do not see the “AppData” folder, that’s because it’s hidden. Make sure Show hidden files and folders is on.

Once the profile has arrived in its new location, go to > “C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\” and open the profiles.ini file in a text editor.

This file lists all profiles registered with your installed Thunderbird. Locate the one you just moved and change the > Path= line to the new location, for example > Path=”E:\Thunderbird Profile\xxxxxxx.default”. Make sure to change > IsRelative=1 to > IsRelative=0 in case you switch from a relative to a non-relative path. Also, the direction of slashes in the path will change from “/” (relative) to “\” (non-relative).

Make this change to the profiles.ini file on each computer Thunderbird is installed on. Once all machines are working correctly clean up the profiles on the C: drives by deleting the xxxxxxx.default file.

The only drawback I see to this method is there might be some issues if T-Bird is running on multiple machines and more than one machine tries to check and update mail at the same time. I have not tested this so I'm not sure of the effects of data collision.

The Following User Says Thank You to OldGunny For This Useful Post:

I have MS Outlook 2003 running on three PC's on a small office LAN (two using Windows 7 and one still on Windows XP Pro). The main .PST file is located on the primary PC in a shared folder. This means that all email comes into one email address and then is moved to each users subfolder based on message rules. This arrangement has the advantage that all users have their own subfolder but can also easily view email going to other users if necessary (we don't have to worry about security problems between users). The only disadvantage is that only one user can access the main .PST file at a time. I would like to enable simultaneous access but suspect that it's not possible. Having a .PST on a shared network folder has not caused a problem in the five years or so that we have done this. Not sure if this is what you want, but it works for us.

New Eudora

I am also a Eudora fan, still using version 7...something. I have no problems on my Win 7 64 machine but I use it as a standalone, not a server. Mozilla has a newer version of Eudora. More info can be found in the below links. I tried it and did not like it but that is my personal preference. You might like it and it may work for your purposes.

Another Eudora option to investigate

A different Eudora update is MailForge at http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/products/mailforge/. I tried it in version 0.X and 1.0X. I didn't pursue it because at that time the import option didn't work well, and I didn't want to redo all my filters and recreate my address book entries. It's supposed to have all the features of the original Eudora. It's now at 2.08. It isn't free, but you get a 30-day trial.

Good luck, whichever way you go.

By the way, I still use Eudora 7.1, on Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit. It works well for me. I use it because every mailbox is saved in plain text, which means I can open suspicious messages in NoteTab Light and see if they are spam or from someone I know, just using someone else's email.

Well, there is certainly a lot of information on mail-clients here.
But let me mention a client I've been using for ten years now. I have 11 mail account on three domains, all stacked into one tab.
This client allows several identities. It can store gigabytes of stuff: Messages and all kinds of attachments. You can set it to collect mail from all accounts as often as you want. You can decide Your default account (sender) with a click. It has a very good back-up function. It has all kinds of fonts and backgrounds for those who like to play. And it can do many other things. And best of all: Its free in its basic version. For the paid version they give a prompt and efficient support.
Name: IncrediMail.

Wow. Thanks for all the replies. In no particular order:
1. I was going to try Incredimail but the website is one of those new 'y-gen' sites that are basically just snazzy download pages with NO useful info. Like Twitter. Hate 'em on principle.

2. Will try MailForge

3. I want to THANK OldGunny for the step by step approach. I did a trial and it -did- seem to work. Sorta. Copying the profile folder -did- actually move the accounts to my server's shared folder, but sadly did not move the -messages-. But I -could- view the same accounts from separate computers---which is progress! I tried then doing a Eudora import from within T-Bird but it crashed @ 60% after 90 minutes of thrashing. I will try again this weekend. It remains to be seen whether or not this solves my original problem---ultra-slow scanning, but we'll see!

4. If that doesn't work, I -will- try Outlook. Thanks for the tip on that!

5. Another thing I am considering is Live365 mentioned in Woody's latest column, but that's a long-shot.

This is going to take a while to figure out since it's basically my mission-critical app. Hopefully y'all can give me some more specific help as I progress through this 'process'.

I don't understand why you (suntower) think Eudora 7 is awful in Windows 7 64. I also (as others here have reported) use Eudora 7.x on a Windows 7 Pro 64bit machine with almost zero problems. There is only one problem I've observed that is unique to Windows 7 - mostly cosmetic - it does not display font spacing correctly in the editor (new mail or reply, etc). I do not use the standard Windows directories for my mail folders and sub folders. I also don't use the initial settings from Eudora 4 which placed the mail folders in the Program Files\Eudora directories. Placing these files into a shared folder for access from other machines should be (I have not done it...) no problem.

Based on your experiences, particularly the failed import problem, I'm wondering if you have tried compacting your mailboxes BEFORE attempting to do the import. It is possible with program crashes etc. that you have a corrupt mailbox somewhere and the import failed as a result.

One particular action that I've found is almost guaranteed to crash Eudora, in Windows XP or Windows 7, is to click on an an html/URL link in an email (to open the link in a browser), then attempt to do something else in Eudora BEFORE the browser comes up and returns "success" to Eudora. Don't do that. (Easy to do on a slow machine) On my older Windows XP machine this is too easy to mistakenly do. On my newer faster Windows 7 machine - it's much hard for me to screw up.

There are several features of this eMail client that I would be very unhappy without. I've been following the development of Eudora 8 from Mozilla in the hopes that a stronger client would result. I'd love to see a better filter organizer/editor. I have a great number of filters that I do not want to loose.

I strongly appreciate the two suggestions for similar alternate clients - Incredimail and MailForge. I will have to investigate these further. Thank you.

I have no problem with Eudora 7 in Win7 64... so long as I store the messages on a local computer. But that's not what I do. However, what I -tried- to make clear in my original post, if one tries to store the messages on a shared folder (as I have been happily doing for over a decade) so that -several- computers can all shared the same messages, the Win XP machines work fine but the Win7 machines will either work so slow as to be unusable or simply hang. This is a -well- known issue with -no- proven solution (many anecdotes and urban-legends).

I always seem to sound snarky when I write about this, but it's just because it totally hit me out of left field---it's a problem I -never- expected to have with Win7. And it's -amazing- to me that more people don't do what I do---have a shared folder. I can't imagine managing e-mail all these years without that capability.

A quick update. This actually -works-. If you like T-Bird (and that's another question at the point), Using the procedure has, in pretty extensive testing so far, has worked OK.

THE GOOD
Better in many ways than Eudora under XP. And by 'better' I mean
1. Everyone worries about trashing the mail database if 2 people try to run the program at the same time. That was always a -possible- issue w Eudora... in practice it was almost never a problem. You were protected because Eudora would simply crash, leaving a file 'owner.lok' that needs to be deleted in order to re-start. In T-Bird, it refuses to launch on machine #2 if T-Bird is running on machine #1 with the same Profile (mail db). So that's good.

2. Performance (getting messages, searching), overall, is better. It's actually -slightly- worse than Eudora under XP. But it's -uniform- across all machines on my LAN---XP or Win7... Wi-fi or Cat6... and that was my deal-breaker with Eudora.

THE BAD
T-Bird is -different. Hoo Boy. Another aspect of Eudora I -really- liked were the Personalities (essentially the 'from' accounts). What was nice about Eudora is that you never had to deal with them---didn't have to see them. You see your mail from the standpoint of -folders-. Regardless of which account you used to send the e-mail, they show up in this 'In' box and then set up filters to auto-move them to folders. For -whatever- reason (and I guess other e-mailers are like this?) T-Bird is oriented all around these 'from' addresses. You -can't- get them out of the way---at least by default. And this is driving me nuts so far. I gotta set up some filters, but I -wish- I could simply -hide- the entire left hand column... as you can in Eudora. But you can't. The -folders- where you actually wanna file messages are now wayyyyyyyyyy down @ the bottom -below- the Personalities. I wish you could change the order of folder display---but I don't think you can. Other than this... which is a bit of a drag... all the grousing I read from ex-users seems overblown. Seems to work fine.

Oh yeah, the Search is not terrible... but even though it -looks- more 'flexible' than Eudora, it's actually a bit slower and you can't just search 'anywhere' quite as easily. Eudora was fast and easy for experienced users--like me. I gues they tried to make it have more 'broad appeal'. Which was stupid IMO.

THE UGLY
The import is just DREADFUL. I tried -several- strategies to get this done, but all were (as Adenoid Hynkel might say) 'far from perfect'. I kept thinking the Search was buggy--because of various anecdotes from earlier versions, but then I realised that 'there's no there there.' The Search wasn't bad... the earlier msgs just didn't get in there. Since T-Bird 3 is basically 'Eudora 10' this is completely unacceptable. This alone is what's keeping me from making the final jump. I will (probably) suck it up and stick with it if there are no other serious issues, but jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.

Thanks again for all the replies. I hope this rant helps someone else in a similar situation.

---JC

Originally Posted by OldGunny

Move your Profile To A Network Drive
Install Thunderbird separately on each computer but store your profile on a network file share. To launch This method to sync Thunderbird email requires that you have access to a shared / network drive. This is the most convenient method in the long run. However, it involves moving your existing profile to that drive, which can be tricky.

First make sure Show hidden files and folders is on. Close Thunderbird. Now copy the profile folder to the desired location on the network drive.

In Win7 you will find your Thunderbird profile under > C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\
If you do not see the “AppData” folder, that’s because it’s hidden. Make sure Show hidden files and folders is on.

Once the profile has arrived in its new location, go to > “C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\” and open the profiles.ini file in a text editor.

This file lists all profiles registered with your installed Thunderbird. Locate the one you just moved and change the > Path= line to the new location, for example > Path=”E:\Thunderbird Profile\xxxxxxx.default”. Make sure to change > IsRelative=1 to > IsRelative=0 in case you switch from a relative to a non-relative path. Also, the direction of slashes in the path will change from “/” (relative) to “\” (non-relative).

Make this change to the profiles.ini file on each computer Thunderbird is installed on. Once all machines are working correctly clean up the profiles on the C: drives by deleting the xxxxxxx.default file.

The only drawback I see to this method is there might be some issues if T-Bird is running on multiple machines and more than one machine tries to check and update mail at the same time. I have not tested this so I'm not sure of the effects of data collision.

FWIW...I have no problems with Eudora on Win 7/64. The secret is to NOT install the data files in the folder that Eudora wants to use, but in a different one (AppData\Roaming\Eudora...no "QualComm") that Win 7 wants to use.